The following are diagrams generated prior to our midterm review, they are serving as a basis for our studio projects through the semester. We are focused generating a deep knowledge base from the large city scale down to the smaller block scale. This is allowing us to continually think critically about our design decisions and to know that our design propositions of a future Tokyo are grounded in reality.

Time in Tokyo is flying by. We have just returned from our two-week travel seminar trip organized by Mayuko Imai and were arranged into five different groups based off of our projects at the mid-review. The pace is picking up around studio and the teams are beginning to synthesize their projects for our next review on November 17th.

The following boards are compilations of the individual projects presented for the midterm.

This weekend we all went out to explore the different wards of Tokyo. The city seems to turn into a different animal when the sun goes down and the neon lights illuminate the buildings. Its a sea of purple, yellow, red, green.

The neighborhood we are living in is quieter than the majority of places we have visited. The street are smaller, the people more polite. After a few days our neighbors are starting to recognize us and saying hello with a head nod in the mornings. It is a great place to wind down after the constant trips to Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Roppongi, and Harajuku our group has been taking.

photo by MCP

Saturday morning we woke up to the beat of drums and wandered out to explore. There was a procession followed by a festival. We are still trying to find out the name of the holiday/festival, but no luck so far. The food was amazing and the experience surreal. It seemed as though everyone in our neighborhood of Shinotsuka was out for the evening. There were street vendors selling toys for the children, fish and turtles in tanks, and local food. After winding through the maze of street vendors we found ourselves in front of a small temple. A line wound down the steps as people waited to pay their respects.

photo by Jason Tucker

photo by Jason Tucker

Today we are starting to get down and dirty with our site research. We were separated in groups to break down the To, the Ku, the Chome, the Ban, and the Go building. It should be a very busy week, our deadline is Friday the 17th. The work environment is much different here than being home at Sci_Arc. Our studios are open Mon-Fri 8 AM to 11PM. We are all learning to be more productive during this time and use the limited hours to crank out as much work as possible. We are off now to explore the site in more detail. Until next time…